Fair Ground
by planet p
Summary: Mehre takes some time off on Earth.


**Fair Ground** by planet p

**Disclaimer** I don't own _Stargate: Atlantis_ or any of its characters.

* * *

The fair was loud and ridiculous. Malcolm couldn't remember, over the cacophony of racket – Oh, were those _clowns_, _on stilts_? – what had possessed him to come in the first place. The whole thing was ludicrously overdone, and his grasp on excessive was larger than most's.

He quickly stepped backward to avoid a gaggle of sticky-handed youngsters moving at speed on unsteady legs, some with their laces coming undone, and bumped into someone behind him. This'd been a really bad idea. All in all, not one of his best.

He turned about quickly to confront the person whom he'd knocked into, apology at the ready, and found himself staring into the face of a tanned, good-looking woman.

"Mind who you step on, eh?" the woman commented dryly, popping a bubble of pink gum. "In future," she added, as an afterthought, more to herself than to Malcolm, her large brown eyes dismissing him already.

He felt deflated. Of course, she'd be in her late twenties, early thirties, at most, age wise; there was no reason for her to even think about him twice. He quickly took note of what she was wearing, hoping to find a hint at a point of possible discussion there.

She was wearing a pink tee shirt, white hooded jacket and a pair of camouflage-patterned cargo pants. A large acrylic gun was splashed across the front of her pink tee shirt.

Malcolm wondered if he'd not be best advised to call it a day. Possibly, this wasn't the sort of woman he'd want to anger.

The woman moved to the side and leaned past him to spit her gum into the trash, and straightened up. "You got any kids?" she seemingly asked the bin.

Malcolm frowned at her odd behaviour, then stared dumbfounded when she turned suddenly to face him, standing very close, and peered into his face, her expression clearly dubious as to his mental capabilities.

"Ah, no," he blurted quickly. "No kids."

The woman seemed to start to roll her eyes, then change her mind mid-roll, and roll them back to their former position, fixed on his face.

Malcolm felt slightly queasy.

"Good thing, too," the woman muttered, and stepped quickly around him.

Malcolm reached out a hand hesitantly and caught her arm. "Ah, excuse me," he began, his voice rising somewhat. "What did you mean-"

"Take your hand off my arm!" the woman told him seriously, her eyes large on his face.

He kept his hand on her arm, feigning casualness. It hadn't been a very kind thing that she'd said, after all, and he intended her to know that she'd hurt his feelings.

"Remove you hand from my arm before I pry it off, cold and dead!" the woman hissed in a slow, low voice.

"I-"

The woman's eyes glinted. "Do it!"

Malcolm loosened his hand on her arm and allowed it to drop back to his side. "I merely wished to make it apparent to you the hurt that I felt at your earl-" He let the sentence drop. The woman had already turned and marched away.

He sighed heavily and watched her disappear behind the colourful, shifting crowd.

* * *

Dusty scowled and stomped away, heading for a particularly dense mass of fairgoers. She'd much rather have been off-world, kicking – or blasting – alien butt!

Though, right now, she had the strong urge to manoeuvre herself 180 degrees and kick that pompous, over-egoed, touchy-feely lump of a human's butt!

With great restraint, she resisted the urge, and pressed on into the crowd, in mind of finding something to eat.

She was hungry, and pissed as Hell, and the food – consumable or not – would take her mind off things for a while, either way.

She finally located an avenue of out-of-van cafés, and attached herself to the end of the queue at one of the van's selling Indian cuisine, and, when she'd ordered, too-hot food in hand, she marched away to find a seat under one of the large white tents, spotted with old, off-white stains and dust, and set down at an available table, nearest to an exit.

Sure, her brother was marrying his bride today, but he'd only sent her the invitation to get a rise out of her. It wasn't as though she was going, or was even _really_ invited.

She chomped on a triangle of pastry and curry and thought about making a stopover at the cemetery where her family had had Alicia buried.

* * *

Of course, it wasn't really _okay_ to beat a 6-year-old at chess, five times in a row, so Malcolm had had to concede to _trying_ to lose, five times in a row.

Even more ridiculous than this, was the fact that he had no idea whatsoever what he was doing playing chess with a 6-year-old, to begin with.

_Oh, that's right,_ now he remembered. The kid had been begging anyone who passed if they'd play with her, and Malcolm was the unlucky bastard who hadn't been _quite_ quick enough to say 'no.'

The lousy chess set was courtesy of the kid's lousy showbag.

He hadn't, logically, been able to see himself playing tag without spoiling the game when he was taken away on a stretcher and hurried into the back of a van owned by the county morgue, and, neither, apparently, had the kid.

The kid, who'd said her name was Destiny – the 4-year-old was her little brother, Ariel – frowned at the chessboard, then at him, as he explained the reason why her 'way super heavy castle' couldn't merely stamp his knight to death with the aid of its 'eight magical legs' and cart it away to the pit for the dead things; there were rules and techniques.

A moment later, he was being shouted at loudly – and, he was fairly certain, offensively – by Destiny's mother, and he made a hasty getaway, spying a man he thought might be the youngsters' father approaching with menacing urgency.

Next time, it'd be best to answer 'definitely not' and move away when the kid started bawling, before too many people began to stare at _him_, and not the kid.

* * *

He ducked into a cream-coloured shed and wandered around, looking at various items of clothes, and assorted knickknacks for a tiring while, before taking a peek outside and deciding it was _most likely_ safe to head out again, and making his way toward the vendors selling food.

He needed a coffee, urgently.

* * *

Dusty finished the last of her food and stood with her mucky paper plate and other oily, grubby items now in need of disposal, and headed over to the trash outside the tent by the exit.

The brightness of the light outside disoriented her momentarily, and she paused and squinted around her for any sign of the trash she'd seen earlier on her way into the tent. Finding what she was looking for, she deposited the items in the trash and turned away, thinking about buying a pair of sunglasses, if she'd be able to find any.

The clouds that had marked the sky earlier in the day seemed to have evaporated, and she could feel the sun, light against her skin and hair, and stinging her eyes, making her suddenly dizzy.

She walked away from the tent and turned the corner; right into someone coming around the corner at the same time.

* * *

She looked up into the face of the man she'd walked into and grabbed him arm. "Forget it, I'll buy you another!" she told him, annoyed, and yanked him after her.

Stupid, clumsy human man!

If she didn't know better, she'd say he'd done it on purpose, but she didn't think he was _smart_ enough for that!

The man followed her without protest, frowning at her as though wondering _who_ she was, and why she was holding his arm.

* * *

She bought the man another coffee, and herself a sports drink, and they sat down at one of the tables _outside_ the tent, in the shade of a tall white van, its engine loud and incessant, to drink them.

The man was telling her how she hadn't really needed to buy him a coffee, and she wasn't listening. She listened, instead, to the hum of the van's engine, and contemplated opening her sports drink. She'd only really bought it to stop the man from feeling silly, and, partially, to stop herself from feeling the same way.

The problem was that now the man probably thought she'd been waiting for something like this to happen – because she'd been _so_ taken with him on their first meeting – or, even, that she'd planned it to happen.

She felt sick and thirsty, but the sweetness, and artificial colouring and flavouring of her sports drink proved unappealing.

"Look, I'm visiting a friend later," she explained, focussing her attention on the man's freckled, round, boyish face and blue eyes, "and I could do with the extra company."

It was a stupid thing to say, but, as it was, she didn't feel so much up to visiting Alicia's grave alone, in truth.

The man frowned, narrowing his eyes for a moment, and nodded slowly, then with more certainty. "Yes. Yes, I will certainly accompany you… to that."

Dusty wondered, morbidly, if, worse case scenario, she'd be disposing of a body later, and met the man's gaze solidly. Stupid thing to say.

The man was offering his hand across the table for her to shake. "Malcolm," he introduced himself. "Malcolm Tunney."

"Marie," Dusty replied back, feeling absolutely no guilt at having just lied to the man's face.

"Marie," Malcolm chirped, sort of stammering on the 'm' sound, his voice airing his clearly how pleased he was with himself, making her want to shoot him. "Both our names beginning with the same letter, quite a coincidence, don't you think?"

Dusty imagined pulling a gun and shooting him right there at the table, if only she'd had one on her, which she didn't. Though, it was probably a good thing, after all. There were a truckload of witnesses who'd be able to swear black and blue that she'd been the one with her finger on the trigger _exactly_.

She smiled at him and waited for him to finish his coffee.

* * *

Malcolm, _clearly_ environmentally cognisant person that he was, had taken the _free_ bus service from town – _Cue the surprise,_ Dusty thought – so that they headed toward Dusty's rental car, parked in the showground's crappy, unsealed dirt parking lot, deep with ruts from the tyres of trucks and cars, made when the parking lot had been reduced, by rain, into little more substantial an anything than a large, blatantly unhelpful, pond of mud.

_Stupid mud!_ she cursed silently, as she pitched forward over one of the ruts and felt Malcolm's hand at her elbow, stopping her from falling. _Stupid, patronising, walking Wraith instant dinner!_

She hit the minute button to disengage the vehicle's central locking, and climbed inside, reaching to switch on the CD player, and crank it up _loud_.

If Malcolm felt like talking, he could talk to himself, and if he felt like eyeballing her indecently, at the least, he'd have a comfortable sized headache to deal with later on; it would serve as a dampener to his creepy fantasies, if nothing else!

She started the engine up, and thought of Dex's space gun. She could fast get to like a gun like that, she thought.

* * *

Despite its Middle of the Frickin' Desert, Nowhereland location, the cemetery was an extensive rectangular stretch of neatly mown lawn – made of _real_ grass – and polished, modern headstones, arranged in rows like church pews, or classroom tables and chairs.

"Your 'friend' is dead?" Malcolm asked, as though hoping she'd refute him, slamming the car door after him.

Dusty offered no reply, and charged on ahead to the cemetery's entrance.

Malcolm hurried to keep pace, and paused at the cemetery gates beside her.

She walked on ahead as soon as she realised she'd hesitated, mentally kicking herself, and felt strange and disconnected as she walked across the insanely green grass, as though it was her who was dead, and not Alicia.

"I apologise, that… that didn't sound right," Malcolm rambled, out of breath, from some way behind her. "I mean, it didn't come out as at all intended. Your friend, see, he or she, they're… they're no here… anymore… So, it's not actually your 'friend' that you're visiting, I guess you could say, but more of a… memory… a… a place were people come to relive memories and feel solemn and wrong…"

Dusty tuned out his words, searching the headstone's for Alicia's name, or little round photograph.

"… for stepping on the grass, which, mind you, has never made a blot of sense at all in my mind… of course, I understand that there's a certain amount of prestige involved… and, undoubtedly, dignity… I mean, insofar as everyone wants to be laid to rest in a _dignified_ rest-resting place, but for the love of… what have you, I can't fathom how _green_ grass can possibly come into the… the matter, at all! If green grass were meant to grow in abundance in the middle of a desert plain, then it would; there's no sense, whatsoever, to be found in _making_ it grow there!"

Dusty stopped in front of Alicia's headstone and read the engraving in her mind, her eyes travelling to the Alicia's tiny, button photograph, already bleached by the sun's unforgiving gaze.

Malcolm had fallen silent, she supposed – it was nearing 1800 hours, he was more than likely hungry – and closed her eyes, listening to the sound of the nothingness, and feeling the air, unmoving, on her face; the sun hot on her cheeks and brow.

She opened her eyes, a short while later – Malcolm's puffy breath stamping her peace into oblivion – and stared at the bright bouquet of flowers resting at the base of Alicia's headstone.

"Well, Allie, I imagine you'll have quite a few more visitors soon; little things wanting to courier your flowers stealthily into their afterlife, I daresay. It shan't be long before you see them. Marie's here too, right now. I imagine that she's wishing you all the best in whatever you do next; not for the first time… and, ah, yes, I hope that goes well for you, too." He shook his head slowly. "We're not… we're just friends." He sighed. "Good luck, then, Allie."

Dusty fixed her eyes to Alicia's photograph, and heard Malcolm head off, back toward the car, if she'd had to guess. _Good luck, Alicia_, she thought, closing her eyes for a moment, and turned and walked away.

Malcolm waited for her at the gates and they walked to the car together.

Maybe it was that he was just playing nice because he thought that there'd be something in it for him, or maybe – just possibly – he wasn't _quite_ as awful as she'd thought.

Maybe she wouldn't kick his butt for calling Alicia Allie, after all…


End file.
